It was really hard to me assimilate that Led Zeppelin one of my fav bands was not a cover band but the band with most plagiarism in the history of rock, they even made plagiarism of plagiarism... Why? It was just to give proper credits and then “Arr. Page-Plant”

You know what gets over-looked. Is someone going to tell me that not one record industry person or sound man never heard those songs Zeppelin lifted? C'mon, the Record Companies are just as guilty.

Good point, but are the record companies responsible for policing the artists, or does the responsibility lie solely with the artist?

Has there ever been a case where a record company has been sued for an artist's plagiarism?Has a record company ever sued one of it's own artists for such a case?

I'd imagine when an artist signs with a record company, the artist assumes all responsibility for possible actions that might take place along these lines.

“What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there,” he says. “All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it and they’re happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can’t tell one note from another.” - Keef

Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page told us he “left no stone unturned” while remastering and expanding the legendary group’s studio albums for their upcoming deluxe edition re-releases, and said his goal was to offer listeners “a window into when they were recorded.”

Page hosted an intimate listening event to preview songs from the expanded versions of Led Zeppelin’s first three albums yesterday in New York City. He shared alternate or newly unearthed live performances of seven of the band’s classics — including a version of ‘Whole Lotta Love’ with a completely different vocal take, and a ‘Gallows Pole’ demo that removes the mandolin and banjo in order to put the focus squarely on Page’s acoustic guitar work. He also played us one of the collection’s most anticipated treasures, an acoustic version of the blues standard ‘Keys to the Highway / Trouble in Mind,’ which featured just himself on acoustic guitar and Robert Plant on harmonica and vocals.

Our initial impressions were something like “holy (word we can’t use)!,” but to be more professional about it, these alternate versions sound refreshingly raw and original. They’re not so radically different that you can’t easily reassemble the more famous versions in your head — we kept adding the guitar slide back into the chorus of this version of ‘Whole Lotta Love,’ for example. But hearing first-hand the effects of the different track and mixing choices Page and his bandmates made back in the day does indeed accomplish their stated goal of offering exciting new perspectives on songs we’ve all enjoyed hundreds of times.

The fit-looking, sharply dressed and quick-witted Page also participated in a highly entertaining Q&A following this listening session. He took us all the way back to the band’s formative days, recalling that when he, Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham first played together, “We knew we’d never heard anything like this before.”

He went on to praise both the individual talents of his former bandmates (“each of us were musical equals”), and Led Zeppelin’s collective chemistry, noting “we played so well as a band and that’s what’s reflected” on these new collections. Page also revealed that no actual restoration was needed for the tapes of the first three albums, as the masters were still in good condition.

As far as the painstaking amount of work Page put into this massive project, he said that he listened to every single one of the group’s recorded tracks and used only complete takes for the new versions of songs. That means there was no after-the-fact Beatles ‘Anthology’ cut-and-pasted “jiggery-pokery” to create the illusion of completed tracks out of different partial versions. “They’re all the real deal,” he assured us.

Which doesn’t mean we’re not in for some big changes. For example, ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’ has what Page called “a completely different drum take,” while the guitars used on the new versions of that track and ‘Heartbreaker’ are “much cooler” and laid back than their fiery original album counterparts. Page sees these different versions as a natural reflection of the band’s musical open-mindedness. “I recall having many different approaches to the guitar. … We pushed things. … Everything was supposed to sound different.”

Always known for his innovative producing skills as well as his songwriting and guitar-playing wizardry, Page told us that the music of Led Zeppelin is now as prepared as possible for whatever the future of audio playback brings. Although he wouldn’t give away his “trade secrets,” he assured us that his work was done in such a cutting edge, high-resolution format that it’ll be ready for future formats Apple and Neil Young haven’t even dreamed of yet.

Page summed up his thoughts by saying that the overall experience of going back through Led Zeppelin’s recorded work was “so joyous,” and that he’s excited for fans to hear the treasures that await them on the expanded versions of the rest of the band’s catalog: “There’s lots of good things to come.” Among them are an alternate version of ‘Bonzo’s Montreaux,’ a percussion solo Page included on 1982′s ‘Coda’ as a tribute to his fallen friend. You can expect those albums sometime in 2015.

“What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there,” he says. “All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it and they’re happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can’t tell one note from another.” - Keef

WOW! I pre-ordered the three super deluxe box sets, they were shipped separately, first LZ III in one big box and then LZ I and II in another, today I received LZ III and it’s really a great production, the LPs are separated one is a replica of the original LZ III gatefold cover with the rotating art and the die cuts and the same for the CD, it’s a replica of the original, great production!!

WOW! I pre-ordered the three super deluxe box sets, they were shipped separately, first LZ III in one big box and then LZ I and II in another, today I received LZ III and it’s really a great production, the LPs are separated one is a replica of the original LZ III gatefold cover with the rotating art and the die cuts and the same for the CD, it’s a replica of the original, great production!!

WOW! I pre-ordered the three super deluxe box sets, they were shipped separately, first LZ III in one big box and then LZ I and II in another, today I received LZ III and it’s really a great production, the LPs are separated one is a replica of the original LZ III gatefold cover with the rotating art and the die cuts and the same for the CD, it’s a replica of the original, great production!!

An early Led Zeppelin publicity photo, with guitarist/mastermind Jimmy Page front and center. He personally remastered the first three Led Zeppelin albums for a new set of reissues.

Keith Spera, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayuneon June 24, 2014

If you're a music critic younger than age 50, you are too young to have written about the great British rock bands of the 1960s and '70s – the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Beatles, Pink Floyd – in their heyday. You never had the chance to expound at length on the merits and meaning of a new album from these acts, when their new albums actually mattered.

Deluxe reissues, happily, afford writers an opportunity to re-assess the greats and riff on not just the original material, but the legacy of the band in question.

Case in point: Atlantic Records' brand new reissues of the first three Led Zeppelin albums. Zeppelin guitarist and mastermind Jimmy Page personally remastered the original albums; he also combed through the tape vaults to discover much of the previously unreleased material on the bonus discs included with deluxe reissues of "Led Zeppelin," "Led Zeppelin II" and "Led Zeppelin III." (Singer Robert Plant, perhaps not surprisingly given his commitment to making new music with new bands -- his new album, "lullaby and...The Ceaseless Roar" is coming out Sept. 9 -- was apparently less interested in trolling through the band's past. Not that he's above trotting out the old songs, as his set at the 2014 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival demonstrated.)

That bonus material includes alternate takes and rough mixes of anthems that, in their finished form, are now part of rock's DNA. The expanded "Led Zeppelin" also contains a live recording of the band in Paris in 1969 that, up to this point, had been available only as a bootleg. All three reissues recently debuted in the Top 10 of Billboard's album chart -- 34 years after drummer John Bonham's death signaled the end of Zeppelin's remarkable 12-year run.

Zeppelin was the sort of band that critics of the day reflexively loved to hate. The reissues have sparked some critical backtracking. In his review of the reissues, Rolling Stone senior writer David Fricke notes that "this magazine is still living down 1969 pans of 'Led Zeppelin' and 'Led Zeppelin II' as brutal blues ham." Fricke's 4.5 out of 5 star review concludes that "the music is now beyond reproach."

The Houston Press rated all of the bonus tracks on the three albums, scoring some as long-lost gems (the previously unreleased instrumental "La La," a rough mix of "Gallows Pole") and some as nothing special (the familiar album version of "Friends" sans vocals).

An epic analysis by Jack Hamilton, Slate's pop music critic and a University of Virginia assistant professor of media studies and American studies, uses the three new reissues – the rest of the Zeppelin catalog will eventually receive the same treatment – to reconsider not only the original albums, but Led Zeppelin's proper place in the whole of popular music.

His premise is apparent in the headline: "Modern rock didn't start with Dylan or the Beatles. It started with Zeppelin."

That said, Hamilton's essay is by no means the work of a slavish fan-boy. He delivers some barbs. "The only way 'Immigrant Song' could have sounded more like a parody of Led Zeppelin," Hamilton writes, "is if it were seven minutes long as opposed to a mere (blessed) two and a half."

But he goes on to praise the remainder of "Led Zeppelin III" as "an album of real songs, enormous eclecticism, and startling beauty. The album's second side contained the finest collection of unplugged rock music this side of (the Rolling Stones') 'Beggars Banquet.'"

He succinctly runs down landmark moments in the post-mortem extension of the Zeppelin mystique, including the 1985 publication of the decidedly unauthorized biography "Hammer of the Gods." Hamilton correctly describes it as "as seminal a ninth-grade text as 'Of Mine and Men,' despite the band insisting its tales of occult hijinks and hotel debauchery were grossly exaggerated."

The reissues, especially the previously unheard, unfamiliar practice takes of now codified songs like "Ramble On," "Whole Lotta Love" and "Gallows Pole," are the real revelations. These peeks-behind-the-curtain, Hamilton asserts, "give us the opportunity to rediscover this band as they were, four absurdly gifted young people making music together, as opposed to the rock deities they'd forever after be imagined as."

The Slate essay reconsiders Page, Plant, Bonham and bassist John Paul Jones in the present tense. In a lengthy assessment for Pitchfork, Mark Richardson reiterates that that is exactly how Zeppelin should be considered. "I'm very glad these new remasters and the attendant publicity push exist," Richardson says, "to get us all listening to and talking about Led Zeppelin again, where they stand and what they might mean. However you feel about them and their brand of ultra-huge arena rock, there has never been another band like them, before or since."

And, thanks to the reissues, a new generation of writers are able to say so.

“What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there,” he says. “All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it and they’re happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can’t tell one note from another.” - Keef

" .......... But he goes on to praise the remainder of "Led Zeppelin III" as "an album of real songs, enormous eclecticism, and startling beauty. The album's second side contained the finest collection of unplugged rock music this side of (the Rolling Stones') 'Beggars Banquet.'"

Been listening to the " Led Zeppelin III ( " Deluxe " ) CDR[s] " in the car the past few days . Lovely .

Led Zeppelin Announces ‘IV’ and ‘Houses of the Holy’ Box Set Date and Details

by Nick DeRiso July 29, 2014 10:46 AM

Led Zeppelin has released the track listings for the next two projects in its well-received album-by-album reissue campaign, ‘IV’ and ‘Houses of the Holy.’ As with ‘I-III,’ each will again be offered in deluxe editions with a bonus disc of unreleased material as well as a “Super Deluxe” box set edition.

Additional audio for the 23-times platinum ‘IV’ includes alternate mixes of ‘Misty Mountain Hop,’ ‘Four Sticks,’ ‘The Battle Of Evermore,’ ‘Going To California’ and, most notably, ‘Stairway To Heaven.’ The 11-million-selling follow up ‘Houses of the Holy,’ meanwhile, will feature seven unreleased tracks on the companion audio disc — including rough and working mixes for ‘The Ocean’ and ‘Dancing Days,’ a guitar mix backing track for ‘Over The Hills And Far Away’ and a version of ‘The Rain Song’ without piano. Complete track listings for both are below.

‘IV’ and ‘Houses of the Holy,’ due on October 28 via Atlantic/Swan Song, will again be available in a variety of formats. Those choices include single disc (without the bonus audio) and two-disc deluxe editions, as well as single vinyl and two-LP deluxe edition vinyl, digital downloads and a super deluxe box set that includes the remastered album, bonus disc, remastered vinyl, high-def audio download, hard-bound 80-page book and album-cover print.

Jimmy Page again personally oversaw the remastering process, and collected each reissue’s unreleased material. The earlier sets devoted to ‘I-III’ each debuted in the Billboard Top 10 in June.

“This track came out of a jam with The Stones’ mentor Ian Stewart on Piano. Bonzo played the intro of “Good Golly Miss Molly/Keep a Knokin’”, and Page added a riff. Fifteen minutes later the nucleus of R&R was done on a tape – displaying the full benefits of recording on location with the tapes ever running” From “Led Zeppelin – A Celebration” by Dave Lewis. The whole album and outtakes were recorded in the Headley Grange Studios with The Rolling Stone Mobile and Stu present.